X-bit labs

LG GSA-4163B DVD±RW Dual Layer Burner Review: New Member in a Successful Family (page 7)

Category: Storage

by Vasily Melnik

[ 04/05/2005 | 10:09 PM ]

16x Speed

We’ve got one speed left, 16x.

 
 
Burning/reading the CD-R disc at 16x speed:
LG GSA-4163 (left) and LG GSA-4160B (right)

The burn session was completed successfully by both devices, but there’s the same instability of speed at reading. It’s not as critical as to make us worry about it, though. Let’s better check out the quality of the disc.

 
 
Quality of the CD-R disc burning at 16x speed:
by LG GSA-4163 (left) and by LG GSA-4160B (right)

It’s all very similar, but the winner of this test is the older model which has fewer C1 errors (9,996 against the GSA-4163’s 12,923). The disc burned by the GSA-4160B has some C2 errors (the GSA-4163 has none), but the distribution of these errors is indicative of a defective blank rather than of a fault of the drive itself. The asymmetry is normal in both cases, but the GSA-4163 still boasts a zero-like beta. The jitter rate is higher on the disc written by the new model and is much higher than that on the discs written at 24x and 40x speeds. Yet the overall quality of the disc is very high, without serious defects.

Summarizing the results of the new drive from LG in the CD-R burning tests, I should applaud the new model for its brilliant performance. It is better than the GSA-4160 which in its turn was one of the best models in its class in terms of burning CDs. Now we’ve got a new leader. The quality of the disc written at 16x speed may be somewhat disappointing, as it is lower than the quality of the 40x and 24x discs, but anyway I haven’t registered better results with any other drive. The GSA-4163 is the best in this test.